Hansard Debates through a Telescope: Two centuries of digital Parliamentary records – free event in Edinburgh 13th Nov 2019

Prof. Marc Alexander discusses how semantic queries are enabled for the Hansard Corpus, a digital record of 7.6 mill UK Parliament speeches.

 

The Hansard Corpus (1803-2003) contains 7.6 million speeches from the UK Parliament, which are not verbatim. Its size – 1.6 billion words – means that it is particularly unwieldy to explore digitally. As a result, in 2015 it was tagged semantically using the tagset of the Historical Thesaurus of English in order to enable semantic queries and aggregation. In this talk, I will discuss what the corpus represents, the overall picture of the Parliamentary record from a semantic point of view (‘through a telescope’), and what such digital parliamentary records can tell us.

More information and booking via eventbrite

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Summer heatwaves, UEFA, and Fireworks – New Official Publications 07.10.19

University of Glasgow Library Blog

Newly published official publications from :

The European Union

General view of the Plenary chamber in Brussels – PHS Hemicycle – Plenary session week 46 2014

Brexit: Make or break? [What Think Tanks are thinking] “The British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has presented a draft text to replace the ‘Irish backstop’, with the aim of reaching agreement with the other 27 EU leaders on the United Kingdom’s orderly withdrawal from the EU in the coming weeks. This note offers links to a series of most recent commentaries and reports from major international think tanks and research institutes on Brexit.”

Rural Connections: Spring/Summer 2019. Latest magazine articles include; Getting smart villages right, Rural women in Europe, Promoting the rural bioeconomy, and Empowering rural youth.

The 2016 European Union report on pesticide residues in food. “This report provides an insight into the official control activities carried out by EU…

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Climate Change, Divisions, and a Brexit Reading List: No Deal – New Official Publications 24.09.19

University of Glasgow Library Blog

Newly published official publications from :

Westminster and the UK Government

Image copyright: UK Parliament / Jessica Taylor

Policing in the UK – “This briefing discusses the key legislation for the governance of police services, how police forces work, including when they work together, how they organise their staff and how they are overseen.

The police service in the UK is divided into 47 separate police forces: 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales, a national police force in both Scotland and Northern Ireland and 2 specialist police forces: the British Transport Police and the Civil Nuclear Constabulary.”

Brexit reading list: no deal – “This paper provides links to a selection of 2019 publications by private sector organisations, think tanks, research institutes and other academic institutions on a no-deal exit from the EU.

As the possibility of the UK leaving the EU without a withdrawal agreement – or ‘deal’…

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Festival of Politics 2019, 10-12th October

The Scottish Parliament’s Festival of Politics is open to everyone.

The 3-day event includes debates on the political and social issues that matter most to you, and a programme of free entertainment.

Prorogation and Adjournment

Reformation to Referendum: Writing a New History of Parliament

The modern practice of prorogation and adjournment is in theory, at least, clearly enough understood. Prorogation is an act of the Crown, usually used to mark the end of one session and fix a date for the start of another. Adjournment is an act of each House of Parliament, used routinely to end each day’s sitting, and to interrupt the normal succession of daily sittings, so that the House can take a break for its holidays, or some other purpose. In modern political memory, prorogation is a brief pause that acts as a routine way of marking the end of one parliamentary and political year and the start of another. There are plenty of earlier instances – leaving aside the much argued-over case of 1997 and the rather sui generis case of 1948 – in which prorogation is said to have been used in order to block one or other…

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Scottish Parliament beta site

The Scottish Parliament would like feedback on their new website which is currenty in beta.  The  site  hosts Legislation (Bills)  and Debates and Questions. My first question is “Where has the official report gone?” The publication called the Official Report, established in 1999, is not mentioned on the beta site. It appears now under  ‘Debates and Questions’. This is an issue for archiving purposes, metadata creation (is this a change of title? I believe not) and citing the resource, for example. Authoritative information is difficult enough to find so consistency  in my experience is key.  Please have a look at the new site and see if it meets your users needs.  Feedback can be sent to info@parliament.scot or by clicking on the ‘was this page useful’ tab at the foot of each webpage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

National Library of Scotland launches Data Foundry

As part of its Digital Scholarship service, the National Library of Scotland has launched a website for its data collections.

The new Data Foundry site presents Library collections as data in a machine-readable format, widening the scope for digital research and analysis.

Techniques like content mining and image analysis can now be carried out using the Library’s collections. It features more than 70GB of data, including digitised text and images, metadata collections, map data and organisational data.

Digitised Library collections available as data through the site include some great official publications collections with more to follow.

•  A Medical History of British India
• Scottish school exam papers
• The Spiritualist
• Gazetteers of Scotland
• Encyclopaedia Britannica

Datasets from more Library material like British military lists, audiovisual collections and web archives are also planned to be published as the site is regularly update.

What’s new on the UN Digital Library

UN Digital Library

Video tutorial: https://youtu.be/vyrLA88zojM

Register for a UN Digital Library account: https://library.un.org/content/contact-us-0

A much-improved version of the Digital Library has now gone live, powered by the latest search technology and offering new user-friendly features, including:

• Searching through the full text of documents in 6 official languages is now possible.
• Search results can be filtered by document types, UN bodies, year or subject.
• Related documents are linked, making it easier to trace actions taken in UN bodies – from the draft to the adopted resolution and on to the meeting record and the voting results.
• Registered users now can set up email alerts to keep up to date with new content on specific topics or by individual UN bodies
• Users can also save and share queries or custom lists of documents.

UNRIC Info Point & Library Newsletter – July/August 2019

 

Recall of Parliament, Generational Income, and Costs of Learning – New Official Publications 26.08.19

University of Glasgow Library Blog

Newly published official publications from :

Westminster and the UK Government

House of Lords Library: The Queen’s Room (c) Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament

Brexit reading list: no deal – “As the possibility of the UK leaving the EU without a withdrawal agreement – or ‘deal’ – has become more likely, the commentary on and analysis of a no-deal scenario has increased.

This paper provides links to a selection of 2019 publications by private sector organisations, think tanks, research institutes and other academic institutions on a no-deal exit from the EU.”

Recall of Parliament – “This House of Commons Library briefing paper discusses the procedure for recalling Parliament, as well as providing details of recent occasions when Parliament has been recalled.”

Policing in the UK – “This briefing discusses the key legislation for the governance of police services, how police forces work, including when they…

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Scottish Agriculture, Wellbeing, and Internet Access – New Official Publications 12.08.19

University of Glasgow Library Blog

Newly published official publications from :

The European Union

General view of the Plenary chamber in Brussels – PHS Hemicycle – Plenary session week 46 2014

How the general data protection regulation [GDPR] changes the rules for scientific research. “The implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) raises a series of challenges for scientific research, in particular for research that is dependent on data. This study comprehensively investigates the promises and challenges associated with the implementation of the GDPR in the scientific domain, with a special focus on the impact of the new rights and obligations on the design and conduct of scientific research.”

Mechanisms supporting single parents across the European Union “This memo presents trends and risks for single parents across the European Union, and provides an overview of existing support mechanisms. We also highlight examples of practices supporting single parents in some Member…

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The National Archives: Two new services for EU legislation

via The National Archives: Two new services for EU legislation

James Cleverley MP, Under Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union made a written ministerial statement on the 3rd July 2019 confirming that the Queen’s Printer’s duties and powers to publish European legislation under Schedule 5 paragraph 1 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act (c.16) which were brought into force on the 3rd July 2019.

The National Archives has released two new services:

.      https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/eu-exit/: this new EU Exit Web Archive is a comprehensive archive of a wide range of legislative materials in English, French and German. This includes Treaties, legislative acts, the Official Journal of the European Union and other supporting materials, and judgements of the European Court of Justice. This archive will continue to be maintained until exit, at which point it will stand as a permanent record of EU law as it stood when the UK left the EU.

.      We have added legislation originating from the EU to www.legislation.gov.uk.  We have also  published details about the amendments to EU legislation from the EU and, crucially, the corrective amendments made by UK legislation in preparation for exit. This new collection of EU legislation will continue to be maintained with new content from EUR-Lex until the point of exit, at which point we will maintain the UK versions of the legislation, with amendments incorporated into the texts.

 

Brexit Update from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre, 29th June 2019

Brexit Update Latest Issue #89

 

Contents:

NEW PRIME MINISTER AND CABINET

• Who has responsibility for Brexit in the new Cabinet?
• What is the new Prime Minister’s Brexit policy?
• Reaction from the Scottish Government
• Reaction from the European Commission
• Reaction from Ireland

NO-DEAL ANALYSIS AND PREPARATIONS

• New UK Government no-deal preparations
• Commons Report: consequences of no-deal for UK business
• OBR: no-deal fiscal stress test

Back Issues

SPICe have been producing the Brexit Update since 15 September 2016. Catch up on past editions at the following link: www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/CurrentCommittees/101103.aspx.

 

Solemn Cases, Wild Salmon, and Statistics on UK-EU Trade – New Official Publications 29.07.19

University of Glasgow Library Blog

Newly published official publications from :

Westminster and the UK Government

House of Lords Library: The Queen’s Room (c) Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament

Food Banks in the UK – “The primary source of data on food bank use is the Trussell Trust. This national charity provides food parcels to people referred to it by professionals such as doctors, health visitors, social workers and the Citizens Advice who meet certain requirements. Other charities also operate food banks or similar services, but there is no centrally collected data on them, except in Scotland. The data used here is mostly from the Trussell Trust, and so it should be considered incomplete – there are some areas where the Trussell Trust does not operate, but where other services may have delivered food parcels.”

Statistics on UK-EU trade – “This note provides basic figures on UK trade with the…

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Government publications at risk: Gaps in the collection and preservation of Ontario government publications, by Simone O’Byrne

This article was originally posted on the CILIP Government Information Group blog on the 24th July.

Simone O’Byrne is a Library and Information Specialist at the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks. She serves as a Director on the Ontario Government Libraries Council, and is Chair of that organisation’s Working Group on Ontario Government Publications. Simone can be contacted by email at simone.obyrne@ontario.ca

 The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Ontario government.

Digital publishing has proved to be game changing in jurisdictions around the world. Online publications are hard to track, can change without notice, disappear, and often lack adequate metadata. Collecting government publications is challenging; in Ontario, there are concerns that many documents will either be lost or become inaccessible over time.

Canada comprises ten provinces and three territories, each with a sub-national government. Ontario is the most populous province, with around 13 ½ million people. The Ontario Public Service numbers around 60,000 full time employees, with 20 libraries or information centres. Not every Ministry, Agency, Board or Commission has a library.

Until 2012, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) maintained a legal deposit program that included publications from all levels of government.  In 2012 provincial and territorial government publications were specifically exempted from LAC’s legal deposit mandate.

Only six sub-national jurisdictions within Canada have a legislated mandate to collect and provide long term access to their own publications:  one is a Provincial Library; one a Provincial Archives and four are Legislative Libraries.  Ontario is not one of the six; left with no legal deposit, and with “published works” specifically excluded under Ontario’s Archives and Recordkeeping Act [1], our publications are clearly at risk.

Whips and the origins of Parliamentary Whipping

Reformation to Referendum: Writing a New History of Parliament

Earlier this year an Early Day Motion sponsored by a number of former chief whips and signed by a long cast of others who have served as whips marked what is being treated as the centenary of the Government Whips’ office, though it was as much to congratulate the current private secretary to the Government Chief Whip, Sir Roy Stone, for a knighthood that acknowledges his achievement in keeping the show on the road over an exceptionally torrid period. The anniversary is of the appointment in June 1919 of Charles (later Sir Charles) Harris (1901-86) as private secretary to the Conservative Chief Whip, paid out of Treasury funds. There was in fact little sense at the time that Harris’s appointment was an innovation – in some ways it was a reversion to previous practice – but Harris’s long continuity and indispensability in the office (he finally retired in 1961), serving…

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